Chapter 13
Mitch
“Put down the gun, Doug,” Charlie begged.
“I will,” he said hoarsely. “But I'm keeping the rifle. And give me the fucking jewels."
"Take them." I threw the pouch at his feet, like feeding a rabid dog.
Doug snatched the pouch, pressing it to his chest with one hand while the other kept the rifle steady. "Asshole," he spat, retreating to the opposite wall, his finger hovering too close to the trigger.
Charlie moved closer to me, her shoulder brushing mine. "Jesus, I can't believe Doug's doing this," she whispered.
"Makes two of us. You okay?"
"I will be when we get out of here."
I nodded. We both would. But it’s going to be a damn long night.
The three of us sat in an uneasy silence. Doug was against the far wall, the rifle across his lap, the jewel pouch rolling between his fingers. His gaze was wild with paranoia and never left us.
Charlie sat beside me, close enough that her arm trembled against mine.
The storm raged on outside, distant thunder rolling through the cave resembling Earth's heartbeat.
Once we settled and Doug's shoulders no longer had that edge, I said, "I'm turning off the lighter now."
"What?" he snapped. "Why?"
I cocked my head at him. Maybe he's scared of the dark, too? I filed that into my “good to know” file. "We need the fuel to get out of here tomorrow. So don't do anything stupid."
Before he could respond, I snapped the lighter shut, plunging us into absolute darkness. The kind of black that pressed against my eyes and made me question if they were even open.
I'd been through some hairy situations in Syria and Afghanistan. Firefights, ambushes, extraction missions gone sideways. But those had been war zones, where staying alive had been a daily battle. I’d expected danger there.
I’d never thought I'd be in that kind of fight for survival again, not out here on our own land.
Then again, if Frank turned up alive, that would be a different story, the kind that ended with blood.
As the minutes crawled by, Doug's shallow, uneven breaths echoed from across the cave.
Occasionally, he muttered a curse or made a strangled sound like he was crying.
The pathetic bastard had crossed a line he couldn't come back from.
It was too late for regrets. Would he let us walk out of here after what he'd already done? I doubted it.
Charlie had gone quiet, too.
I shifted slightly, and she flinched.
"Hey," I murmured. "I'm just getting comfortable."
"Sorry," she whispered. "I hate the dark."
That made two of us. Not that I'd admit it.
The dark still got to me, and I hated that about myself.
I hated that my childhood terror survived despite decades of forcing myself into worse nightmares than this.
I'd tried working through that bullshit for years, but I hadn’t been able to kill it, no matter how many ops I'd run in pitch-black conditions.
Charlie made a soft sound, and her breath hitched. Is she crying? I wanted to pull her to my chest and tell her everything would be okay, but she probably wouldn't want that. Or my bullshit. She was smart enough to know we were far from okay.
Minutes bled into hours, and the air grew colder, seeping into my bones.
Beside me, Charlie fidgeted, rubbing her arms, curling into herself. Her damp clothes had to be making the cold worse.
Then her teeth began to chatter loud enough that even Doug probably heard it across the cave.
"Come here," I said quietly.
"I'm okay."
"No, you're not. You're freezing." I shifted, spreading my legs and reaching for her shoulders in the darkness. "Come on."
She hesitated, then moved slightly so our thighs were touching.
"Charlie, will you just …" Gripping her shoulders, I guided her between my knees, pulling her back against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, using my body to provide warmth and to block the cold seeping from the cave walls.
She went stiff, every muscle locking up like she might bolt.
"Relax," I murmured near her ear. "We're just staying warm. That's all."
She seemed to be holding her breath. Then, slowly, she softened against me, her head settling under my chin. Her breath came out shaky.
"Better?"
"Yes," she whispered. "Thank you."
Across the cave, Doug shifted, and it sounded like the rifle barrel scraped against stone.
I tensed, straining to listen, ready to shove Charlie away and jump to my feet if he came near us. But the only other sounds were the distant thunder echoing down the tunnel, a constant drip coming from somewhere, and Charlie's delicate breathing in my arms.
She leaned her head back and twisted her face toward mine. "Mitch?" Her voice was so quiet I almost didn't hear it.
"Yeah?"
"Do you think he'll let us go when we get out of here?"
I didn't answer right away. I didn't want to lie to her.
"I don't know," I finally said. "But I won't let him hurt you. I promise you that."
Doug muttered to himself across the cave, and yet, I was confident he hadn't heard us. Maybe he was delusional or having a nightmare.
Charlie pressed closer, her head resting against my shoulder. "I'm scared."
"I know."
"Are you?"
"Don't worry, he's not going to touch you," I answered, dodging her question.
She turned her face away, and her shivering increased. As I hugged her tighter, I couldn't decide if she was cold or scared. Probably both.
It was a long time before she stopped shivering, longer still until her breathing settled enough to convince me she was asleep.
I kept my hold on her, waiting for a dawn that couldn't come soon enough.
I didn't sleep. Couldn't.
My thoughts drifted to that skeleton. Who the hell was he?
Someone must have searched for him once.
A wife, maybe. Children. Parents. People who’d spent years wondering what had happened to him.
I needed to find out who he was, at the very least, so his family would know what had happened and have some closure, even if it came decades too late.
The jewels were probably the reason the poor bastard had been whacked over the head. Though it made no bloody sense that they’d been left behind. If you killed a man for treasure, you took the treasure.
Unless the killer had never made it out of these caves either.
Koolaroo Ranch had its share of bodies in the dirt.
Most were in the family plot between the new homestead and the old one.
But there were others. Men who'd died in the old diamond mine when a detonation hadn't gone as planned back in the 1960s.
Their eleven bodies were forever entombed somewhere in the collapsed tunnels.
Then there was that plane wreck I'd discovered on Opal Ridge over a decade ago. They’d never found the pilot, never found his mysterious female passenger either, though she'd left her suitcase behind when she’d vanished into thin air.
This land had secrets. And I'd bet my Harley that my old man had been the trigger behind a few of them.
Maybe he'd killed the man with the jewels.
No. Those gems wouldn't be here if he had.
Dad would do anything for a quick buck. He'd have pried those jewels out of a dead man's hand and sold them before the body had gone cold.
My younger brother, Kayden, had inherited that dangerous trait of putting profit above common bloody sense.
He'd taken his fair share of beatings from Dad over it, too.
Yet he never seemed to learn. Then again, maybe he'd changed in the last decade.
I certainly had. Though I couldn't decide if I was better or worse.
Charlie shifted and mumbled about dinosaurs, and I smiled. Even unconscious, her mind was on her work.
I wondered what she'd been like before all this. Probably driven. Focused. The kind of woman who didn't take no for an answer when she wanted something.
I respected the hell out of that.
My siblings and I had that same stubborn streak. Cassidy, especially. She'd sooner punch you in the face than admit defeat. Declan was quieter about it, but just as unmovable when he'd made up his mind. Kayden, despite his chaos, had that Branson refusal to quit.
We’d all watched our old man barge his way through every obstacle. But he hadn't just bulldozed, he’d punished, or worse, broken anyone who got in his way.
I'd spent ten years trying to unlearn his lessons. Trying to be better than the bastard who’d raised me.
Some days I succeeded. Others...? Not so much.
I raised my arm to look at my watch, and my jaw tightened.
Bloody hell. I must’ve lost my watch in that damn flood.
The watch was a gift from Cassidy. The last thing I'd gotten from my family before I’d pissed off and left this place.
Cass would be furious when she found out.
That watch had probably cost her a week's pay, maybe more.
Every sound Doug made, I cataloged. Every shift, every breath, every scrape of that gun on the stone floor … his weird muttering.
I hope he's having a nightmare.
But I understood his kind of desperation and the willingness to do terrible things for the people you loved.
I'd left my entire family behind to escape my father's poison. I’d walked away from Koolaroo, from my siblings, from everything I'd ever known. But I wasn’t walking away again. This time, I’d finish what I should have done a decade ago.
Doug and I weren't so different. We'd both made choices we couldn't take back. Both of us had ended up in situations we didn't know how to escape.
The difference was, I'd learned to live with my choices.
Doug was still running from his. I knew the stupid bastard was never going to back down, which meant I’d have to finish this bullshit, too.
My mind ran through scenarios, exit strategies, and ways to disarm him. I'd disarmed men twice his size in situations ten times worse than this. However, with Charlie in my arms, I couldn't risk her getting hurt. So, I wouldn't take him on here in the dark.
I’d known Charlie for merely hours, yet she’d somehow become someone worth dying for.
I'd been treating people as my mission objectives for so long that I'd forgotten how to care. Ten years of war had ground the humanity out of me, turning everything into risk assessment and acceptable losses.
Charlie was not an acceptable loss.
So, I waited.
And stared into the absolute blackness.
And held her close.
Because when morning came, all hell was going to break loose again.
I needed to be ready.